


Take Me Home

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Implied Relationships, Platonic Romance, Season 9 Episode 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:17:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This little thing right here just had to be done. Had to. I watched Episode 4 of Season 9 and I just... Had to.<br/>For context, this takes place *SPOILERS!* when the Wicked Witch mind-controls (is that what it's even called?) Sam.<br/>It's my version of what I think happened when the Witch took over his consciousness.<br/>Enjoy!<br/>-DigiRez</p>
    </blockquote>





	Take Me Home

**Author's Note:**

> This little thing right here just had to be done. Had to. I watched Episode 4 of Season 9 and I just... Had to.  
> For context, this takes place *SPOILERS!* when the Wicked Witch mind-controls (is that what it's even called?) Sam.  
> It's my version of what I think happened when the Witch took over his consciousness.  
> Enjoy!  
> -DigiRez

 

Ezekiel could feel the venom stirring.

He knew there was something wrong, something very terribly wrong, even though his conscious swam in exhaustion so dense it was like trying to put an arm through a lead wall.

Blearily, Ezekiel peered into Sam’s thoughts. He was immediately battered back by the corroding rage of the venom.

“Sam?” He murmured, stumbling into some kind of upright position. Bringing Charlie back had, has he’d known it would’ve, completely drained him. He had curled into a tiny corner of Sam’s subconscious, and fallen asleep.

He had lied to Dean. Purposely, deliberately lied. He couldn’t tell a Winchester that he’d like to overstay his welcome- Ezekiel was an angel, not stupid. But Sam’s mind was comfortable, quiet, like a warm bed on a rainy night. He didn’t quite want to leave it. There were jagged places where memories ran sour, and dark abysses where his thoughts straddled the line of macabre, but every being in existence had those. Even Ezekiel himself. So he chose the tiny corners, in the far back, where the memorized lines of Beowulf and O. Henry lived, where it was warm and he could rest without interruption. Sam didn’t notice him consciously, but his unconscious was exceedingly curious about the rough-voiced fallen angel taking refuge against it. It wrapped him in something of a welcome, drowning out the sound of Ezekiel’s breathing with its silence. A loud silence, one that Ezekiel didn’t have to think in.

This rage was not Sam, not on any level of conscious. Sam was not malicious, Sam had never beaten Ezekiel back.

“Sam.” The angel tried again, being as quiet as possible. He couldn’t alert the subconscious of his presence, not yet, not without the risk of Sam rejecting him outright, wherever he was. Ezekiel was too weak to endure that, and he was concerned of the effects it would have on Sam, too. He was too feeble without Ezekiel, without the mesh of their strengths that powered his limbs and his glowers and the knot in his jaw, the finger that pulled back the trigger. They were melded too closely.

The venom lit up, glowing iridescent in the places that it touched, in the dark corners of Sam’s conscious, drowning out the Winchester from his own thoughts. It was a dark glow, like the black lights they sold at Halloween, and it spread as if it were rust on iron. A poisonous antibody.

It reached his thoughts, Ezekiel knew it did, he knew where Sam’s thoughts were. He knew where Sam liked to think- not too far from his memories, which he kept at the back of his mind, but far enough that they didn’t entirely consume him.

Ezekiel flared his wings, glaring at the intruder.

“No, you are not welcome here.”

‘ _Nor am I_ ,’ He thought distantly. If Sam’s unconscious heard it, it didn’t make any indication.

It wrapped itself around his thoughts, like a putrid leech, curling its lights around Sam’s conscious. Ezekiel stood, at the precipice of the Winchester’s unconscious, watching the antibody consume Sam’s conscious thought.

“No!” He roared, edging forward, eyeing the line where the subconscious lay. That was no-man’s land, it was dangerous, it was a place of no return. He couldn’t help Sam, he was too weak, he was too far away.

He looked out with Sam’s eyes. The girl they called Charlie, and the woman who fell from Oz, stared back. Sam was aware of Dean beside him.

Sam was aware of Dean?

Ezekiel’s wings flexed, arching over his head in divine fury. The antibody was a venom, leaking across the plane of Sam’s mind.

He could vaguely sense Sam struggling.

So, the Winchester could see too. Could see the panic in Charlie’s slack expression. He was conscious in that sense- or, rather, subconscious. The antibody was now conscious, not Sam. It had shoved him into the next plane- that of the subconscious. Mere inches from Ezekiel.

The angel felt a knot of anger slowly unfurling itself in the center of his chest- he had not felt such anger in… he couldn’t pin down exactly how long.

Silently Ezekiel slipped down onto his knees, looking out over the phosphorescent glow of Sam Winchester’s subconscious, and the mottled dark light of the venom. Carefully, he placed his palm over the line, into the subconscious plane.

 

* * *

 

There was nothing, for a fraction of a second. Then it was like falling into a vortex.

His senses were overwhelmed, trying to sort out too many images, too many sounds, all at once.

“ _Memories_ ,” Ezekiel murmured- or maybe he thought it; he couldn’t quite distinguish the two at the moment.

Soft amber lights and the earthy smell of pine, the tickle of needles and the clatter of little metal ornaments being strewn onto branches. So this was Christmas, Ezekiel noted. It was beautiful. This was how Sam celebrated his Father, God.

The image changed, the pine tree melting away into a broken dust road. The ornaments faded into tall wooden pillars. The golden glow, to a noose wrapped around one of them. Sam remembered the figure of a broken hunter, hanging limply from a noose. Ezekiel backed away, mortified, when the image changed again.

A television screen. Fire. Smoke, debris, the pictures of familiar faces. A singular, bone-chilling name; ‘Lilith’. Ezekiel shivered, overcome with spite and loss and grief. These were the emotions that made up Sam, twining into Ezekiel’s very being.

“Stop.” Ezekiel commanded quietly. The scene changed. A spatter of blood, a neck twisted sideways.

“Stop!” Louder, trying to reach Sam.

A hatchet splicing through wood, the sound of shredding flesh, the warm wetness of blood on Dean’s skin.

“SAM!”

It was deathly quiet, the images releasing Ezekiel from their hold. He coughed, gasping, a sudden hole in his chest that used to be filled with sights and sounds.

_‘I don’t want her to control me.’_

Something so broken and quiet shouldn’t have reached Ezekiel. But he was waiting for it, he caught it, he knew that sooner or later Sam would resurface from his own personal hell.

“I know,” Ezekiel said slowly, a wave of exhaustion biting at him. He sat down in the middle of his Winchester’s subconscious, and tried to hang on to the last remaining dregs of Sam’s warmth.

“I know.”

_‘Please, someone stop me. Help me.’_

Ezekiel winced at the whimpering plea. The darkness of Sam’s mind dissipated, opening up to Ezekiel. He was a familiar presence to the subconscious, the angel was something of a thought that was constantly there. A memory that had no background, but it was not foreign.

Sam was unconsciously inviting Ezekiel further into his mind, because Ezekiel was familiar to him on a much deeper level than he could ever hope to grasp.

 _‘I don’t want her to control me.’_ Sam repeated.

“There is nothing I can do. I am so sorry,” Ezekiel said quietly, sitting like a small child, watching the whirlwind of half-shrouded, half-formed thoughts and resurfacing memories.

“You cannot collapse into yourself, Sam. Hold, please, your friends will save you soon.”

_‘I want to go home.’_

Ezekiel’s heart shattered, sympathy welling in his throat. Sam sounded so small, and fragile, quivering behind an obscuring curtain of subconscious.

“Let me see you. Please.”

He was a little fuzzy around the edges- ethereal, almost, and his hair was a bit shorter than Ezekiel knew it to be. His clothes were different, but no matter how hard Ezekiel tried focusing in on them, they seemed to be in constant flux. Plaid shirt and jeans to black jacket and pants to ‘FBI-issued’ suit and a million other things in between.

 _‘Stop me.’_ Sam repeated, begging. He sat in front of Ezekiel, the soft edges of his form casting a light glow on the dark plane of his subconscious. The way Sam thought of himself was very straightforward, nearly accurate to the pore. Ezekiel smiled at him sadly.

“I cannot.”

_‘Then help me.’_

A crease formed between Ezekiel’s eyebrows as he tipped his head to the side.

“I do not understand- Sam, I have no physical control over you. I can do no good here. All I can do now, is console you.”

Sam stared at him insistently.

_‘Can you make the memories go away? Please, I need them to stop. I just… I want to go home. I just want to go home.’_

“I will shield you.” Ezekiel vowed, and the image of Sam rippled. He grimaced.

_‘It’s almost like I can’t stop them.’_

“You can’t. In your subconscious, things have a way of happening naturally. The memories will not be pleasant- you are wrought with grief, Sam. I will do my best.”

Sam’s expression melted into relief. Gratitude, for a being inside his mind he was not even fully aware of. But he did not question Ezekiel- whether this was part of his losing consciousness, or because Sam was simply so familiar with Ezekiel’s presence that he trusted him implicitly. Ezekiel raised his wings, flexing them with a shudder.

“Prepare yourself.” Ezekiel warned gravely, wincing at his own frailty. It was difficult now to even extend his wings.

They covered Sam, shrouding him in their shadow, encircling him without touching him.

Sam scowled, glaring into his palms, his shoulders shaking.

“Concentrate.” Ezekiel growled, a pressing weight increasing against his wings, his spine, the crown of his head. But he was a creature made of stars and divinity. He would not bow to ghost pains of past horrors.

_‘I don’t want her to control me.’_

“She’s won’t be,” Ezekiel said, voice shaking with strain. The pressure grew stubborn, increasing, pain lancing through the bones of his wings and stretching out into his primaries.

“She won’t be, Sam. Just fight it. Hold. Your friends need you.”

Sam bared his teeth in some inner pain, and held his eyes shut. Ezekiel exhaled sharply, the weight intensifying.The first crack appeared, shoving him onto one knee, a fist pressed into the ground to keep him upright. His wings quivered, the gold-brown plumage brushing against Sam’s hair and face and waist.

“I cannot hold on much longer, Sam. You have to make it stop.”

_‘I want to go home.’_

“I cannot bring you home.”

_‘Then help me get there.’_

Ezekiel glanced up, to find Sam staring at him, desperate. The angel bowed his head.

“You remembered Christmas. The memory of Christmas- bring it back. Ornaments on a tree, music in the room. Who were you with?”

 _‘Dean,’_ Sam said immediately, _‘Dean.’_

Ezekiel gasped, the weight crushing him. The pain grew into a white-hot agony, ripping its claws into his skin.

An image tore through Ezekiel- the Winchesters, sitting in across from each other at a restaurant table, playing a little board game that sat between them. Sam was grinning, picking up a brightly-colored peg and moving it carefully across the board.

_‘That was Easter. We went to Cracker Barrel,’ Sam grinned, ‘Dean ordered two slices of pie all to himself at ate them in ten minutes, tops. He nearly threw up when we got back to the motel.’_

The weight subsided, bringing an ache of relief to Ezekiel’s wings. The pressure reeled, as if startled by Sam’s memory.

Another image, this time of tall redwood trees and the glint of a Glock in two pairs of hands.

_‘Hunting in California.’_

“Sam, I can’t-”

_‘Valentine’s Day in New York, on the lake.’_

_‘Castiel coming back.’_

Ezekiel flinched.

_‘The angels falling.’_

He shuddered, the weight unbearable. A hot barb of pain smashed into them both, sending them reeling. It was from Sam’s physical form- but both angel and subconscious were too preoccupied to look out and view the scene.

“Sam, stop.”

_‘Dean saving my ass- again.’_

“Please, just let go. The memories are crushing me.”

Sam peered up at Ezekiel. Suddenly the weight was no more.

Ezekiel collapsed, curling in on himself.

“Sam,” He breathed, body aching like a pile of molten metal, “Is Dean your home?”

Sam scrambled to Ezekiel’s side, carefully peeling away the angel’s wings, tucking them over Ezekiel’s torso like a blanket. Ezekiel sighed.

_‘Yes.’_

Ezekiel blinked at him sadly.

“You’re not going to remember me.”

Sam frowned, _‘What are you talking about? You just kept me from collapsing. Hey, no, don’t close your eyes.’_

“I cannot die,” Ezekiel said lowly, “Not here. You… are keeping me from collapsing. Thank you for that, Sam.”

The mental vision of Sam began to ripple- the venom was retracting.

_‘Thank you. I don’t want to leave you here.’_

“I will survive,” Ezekiel murmured, lips twitching, “After all, I do have you. Go- the antibody is retreating. Your friends need you. And Dean.”

Sam brushed a hands against his wings, making Ezekiel shiver- but not at all unpleasantly- and curled it around his shoulder.

“I will remain.” Ezekiel breathed when the mental image of Sam finally faded out.

The angel brought himself to his feet, barely managing the exertion, and collapsed back against Sam’s unconscious. It cloaked itself around him, breathing warmth into him and whispering little verses of Robert Frost. Ezekiel smiled faintly, wings drawn tight around him, and slept.

He was home.


End file.
